CECIL HURT: Theres a feeling of Thanksgiving November 25, 2004
ANCHORAGE, Alaska | The University of Alabama basketball team seems to be enjoying the Anchorage nightlife.
That isnt necessarily a bad thing. With only about six hours of sunlight per day in late November, and with some heavy cloud cover even then, just about any life in Anchorage is nightlife. And while at least one Crimson Tide player was spotted dancing the night away with the locals, that, too, was hardly a disciplinary offense.
A welcome party for participating teams at the Alaska Cultural and Heritage Center included some traditional dancing by the King Island Eskimo tribe, and Tide forward Jean Felix -- a native of Cameroon by way of Paris -- was drafted momentarily to participate in a truly transcendent moment of cultural connection.
For the most part, the trip has been strictly business. The Tides three games on this Arctic excursion will go a long way towards building the non-conference part of Alabamas NCAA Tournament resume. If Alabama advanced past Alaska-Anchorage on Wednesday night (in a game played well after The Tuscaloosa News holiday deadline), then the rest of the Tides competition will come from teams like Washington, Utah and Oklahoma, which is just the sort of opposition that only bolsters a strength-of-schedule rating.
Even a business trip has its consolations, though, like meeting up with old friends, or finding unexpected new ones. For instance, Dr. Steve Cobb, the athletics director at Alaska-Anchorage, ended his welcoming speech at the pre-tournament party with the question, Anyone here from Selma?" It turns out that Cobb is a native of Jemison and a Montevallo graduate who simply wanted to visit with someone else who knows that ice belongs in tea, not on every sidewalk and street in the city.
Darby Rich, the former Crimson Tide basketball player, is now the strength and conditioning coach for Oklahoma, and he was on hand for the Tides practice. It didnt take long before a conversation with Rich turned to the same topic that comes up between Alabama expatriates, whether they meet in Fairbanks or Fiji -- that is, the Alabama-Auburn game.
Our game (i.e., Oklahomas) with Baylor started a couple of hours later," Rich said. So we had the first half of the Alabama-Auburn game on our Jumbotron in Norman, and our fans were going crazy. I wish Alabama could have held on, but they did a good job."
Meeting old friends fits nicely into a Thanksgiving Day column. Even with Tuscaloosa roughly 4,383 miles away, the thermometer under 30 degrees and the sun a distant memory, there are plenty of things for which to be thankful.
Im thankful, for instance, that an afternoon watching eagles flying over the Turnagain Arm, followed by a couple of basketball games in the evening, constitutes a full days work. Too many sports writers, particularly those who primarily cover intercollegiate athletics, grow cynical too quickly, and forget that it was the love of sports that drew them to the profession in the first place.
Im thankful to live in a country that remains open and free, where Akini Adkins can see snow for the first time, or Felix, from Cameroon, can fly to Alaska and, perhaps, get a chance to play against Utahs Andrew Bogut, a native of Australia. Terrorists havent succeeded yet in isolating this country, or inhibiting our chances to travel.
So, even though Anchorage is a long way from home, and Alabamas basketball trip here is, in one sense, just an aspect of a billion-dollar business, there is still a little Thanksgiving feeling, along with the decided frostbite, in the air.
-- Roll Tide!! Rick
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